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"She is," Miranda said, in that distant, weird kind of voice Claire dreaded. "She'll be coming. Soon." She blinked and smiled. "See you tomorrow!"
She practically skipped away. Claire watched her go, shook her head, and headed into the monster's lair.
The monster himself was standing in the middle of the lab, pacing and shaking his cell phone as if he was trying to get it to work by sheer force. He'd changed clothes again--this time, to a Victorian long-tailed coat in black, a purple vest, no shirt, and black pants. He'd ditched the bunny slippers this time, in favor of real shoes. When she came jogging down the steps, he looked so relieved she almost backed up a step or two.
"There you are!" he cried, and held his phone out to her. "This thing doesn't work."
"It does. I got your text."
"But I've been sending it over and over, and then it just stopped working."
It had stopped working because, evidently, he'd been pushing buttons so hard he'd broken them. Claire shook her head, took the phone, and tossed it in the garbage can in the corner. "I'll get you another one," she said. "Well? I'm here. What's the crisis?"
He stopped and stared at her. "Bishop is on the loose, and you're asking me what the crisis might be? Really?"
"I...thought the vampires would be taking care of that."
"Indeed. Oliver's got half the vampires in Morganville making inquiries of the other half."
"Only half?"
"The half we can trust interrogating the half we can't," Myrnin said. "A sad truth, but there are more than a few who preferred Bishop's open tyranny to Amelie's more reasonable approach. There are always a few, Claire, who like being told what to do instead of being required to think. And those are the ones you should fear. That goes equally for humans, I'm afraid. Critical thinking has become a sadly rare skill these days."
She nodded, because she already knew that. "So what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to speak with Frank. We need him to be on the alert for any sign of Bishop. He has control of the monitoring systems, and he should be able to provide us solid leads."
"Wait, you wantme to do it? Why didn't you?"
Myrnin drew himself up to his full height, hands clasped behind his back. "I have things to do," he said. "And...Frank and Imay have had a little disagreement. He isn't speaking to me anymore."
"He--Wait, can he do that?"
"Damn straight I can." Frank's gravelly voice came from her cell phone speaker, muffled by her pocket, but still clearly audible. "I can do what I want, and I don't want to hear anything from that jackass anymore."
"Frank--" Claire sighed. "Fine. I hate this, you know. I hate that you're all fangs-out at each other when one of you doesn't even have any fangs anymore. But we don't have time for your girl fight, okay? Will you please look for Bishop, so he doesn't get us all killed horribly?"
"Well," Frank said, "you've got a point about that."
Claire turned to Myrnin. "Anybody else you want monitored?"
"Well, there's Gloriana," Myrnin said. "I would definitely look out for Gloriana, since she's the newest in town, and, well, you've met her, haven't you?"
Claire frowned. Gloriana...oh.She'd met her once, briefly, at a party about a month ago. Gloriana--or Glory, for cutesy-short--was beautiful, in an antique kind of way; she had waves of long blond hair and bright blue eyes and a smile that made men melt like ice cream in the sun. Vampire, of course. Charming. But she'd taken a special interest in Michael, and that hadn't sat very well with Eve at all. "Glory's a Bishop girl?"
"I wouldn't put it like that," Myrnin said, "but Gloriana has a history of betting with the winners, and she was Bishop's pet for a short time, about three hundred years ago, I believe. She may still have some fond memories of him, as difficult as that is to understand. Old loyalties die hard among our kind. So do old enemies, and she never was Amelie's friend, though they're polite enough in public."
"Is sheyour friend?" Claire hesitated, then said, "Or, you know,friend ?"
He raised his eyebrows and air quoted. "Friend?"
"You know what I mean. Oliver practically admitted he'd had a fling with her once."
"I don't haveflings ." Again with the air quotes. "And, no, Gloriana is not my friend. Nor my enemy, particularly; I rarely had anything to do with her at all. She's agreed to abide by the laws of Morganville, but if a situation arises where she might sidestep them...well. I would not like to stand between her and her desires. She can be quite cold-blooded."
Claire felt a stab of dread. "Uh, she could be after Shane, then?"
"Shane?" Myrnin rolled his eyes. "Why in the world would you leap to such a conclusion? Definitely not. She doesn't do humans. She finds them commonplace. And, strangely enough, not everyone is as fascinated by your beau as you are."
"Well, then, would she be afteryou ?"
That made him stop for a second, as if the idea had never occurred to him. "No," he finally said. "No, I don't believe she would be at all interested. I'm not...suitable. By which I mean, sane. She can't show me off in public, which is very important to her; she likes to be seen with her conquests. Also, I'm not sure that she could affect me in any significant way. My patterns of thought are quite...different, you know."
"Oh, I know. Frank, are you getting this?"
"Bishop, check. It's not like I'm going to forget that the bastard who ripped out my throat and made me the walking dead is out there. Gloriana, yeah, I know her. Gloriana's on my radar. She just left the gym about ten minutes ago, and she's arriving at Common Grounds right now."
Myrnin nodded. "She does like it there. Claire, perhaps you should make friends. You're quite a friendly person."
"Be your spy, you mean."
"Inelegantly put, but accurate. I have things to do. Frank, please stay in touch with Claire via her communicator."
"Cell phone," she said. "Star Trekhad communicators."
He flapped a hand. "I hardly see the difference."
"I'm still not listening to him," Frank said. "But, yeah. I'll stay in touch, kid. You got some kind of headphones? Bluetooth?"
"Earbuds," she said. "Why?"
"So I don't broadcast all over the place when I talk to you, kid. I thought you were smart."
"It's been a bad day," she said. "I almost got stabbed."
Myrnin stopped pacing, looked at her for a moment as if trying to see any possible wounds, and then said, "Almostdoesn't count, now, does it? Hurry onward. And, Claire?"
"Yes?"
"Do be careful and watch out for Bishop; he was dangerous before, but I don't know what he is now, except much less stable. Also, I don't trust Gloriana. I don't know why on earth she's here in Morganville. Or why she's decided to come herenow . As I said, she and Amelie never got along, despite their exquisitely polite manners toward each other. So I do believe we have to assume that there can't be a coincidence between Gloriana's arrival and Bishop's escape." He hesitated, then added, "Do be careful. I can't replace you as easily as all that."
That was Myrnin's idea of a compliment. Nice.
SHANE
Claire went to school, and I had a day off, and I felt kind of...lost. I shouldn't have gone back to the gym, but I did. Don't know why, except that I was out and it seemed like the right thing to do. The jackass who manned the front desk gave me the same "you are a bug and I will crush you" look as before, but then he looked down at a list and nodded to me. "Go on in," he said. "You're taken care of."
"Taken care of how, exactly?"
"Paid for," he said. "No charge to use the gym."
Well, crap. Tough to justify walking out on that, so I went in the door and breathed in the scent of sweat, effort, old leather, metal, desperation. Gyms smelled like home to me, especially after my mom and Alyssa died; life with Dad had been boiled down to gyms, bars, cheap motel soap, and blood.
It smelled like...home? If that isn't too sick.
I tried the sauna, which was superhot and damp, and changed into an old pair of sweatpants. Bare feet, because I fear no athlete's foot fungus, and besides, I was planning on kicking the crap out of a heavy bag, anyway.
